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At the start of my teaching career, when I was fresh out of graduate school, I briefly considered trying to pass myself off as a cool professor. Luckily, I soon came to my senses and embraced my true identity as a young fogey.
After one too many students called me by my first name and sent me email that resembled a drunken late-night Facebook post, I took a very fogeyish step. I began attaching a page on etiquette to every syllabus: basic rules for how to address teachers and write polite, grammatically correct emails.
Over the past decade or two, college students have become far more casual in their interactions with faculty members. My colleagues around the country grumble about students' sloppy emails and blithe informality.
[...] Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders.
-- submitted from IRC
Source: The New York Times
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 16 2017, @10:38PM (2 children)
For what it's worth: I attended and graduated from a college that is routinely and justifiably cited as a hotbed of liberalism, not all that long ago. But my professors left their political views largely outside of the classroom. In most cases, I didn't even know what their political views were. That's because politics has no effect on linear algebra, database design, music theory, or many other subjects I studied heavily. History, gender studies, and economics got more political, but I have it on good authority (the head of the Young Republicans on campus, who was fairly friendly with me) that conservative ideas were not being rejected out of turn nor became cause for discrimination. The only on-campus speaker I saw anybody try (unsuccessfully) to silence was Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Larry Summers, and conservative voices like Arthur Laffer were able to speak without incident. There was an ingrained understanding of how to handle speakers whose views you found distasteful: Let them give their speech, then do your best to pillory them in the Q&A section.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:08PM (1 child)
There was an ingrained understanding of how to handle speakers whose views you found distasteful: Let them give their speech, then do your best to pillory them in the Q&A section.
Quite right too. And also the reason why Theresa May isn't meeting any voters and will not take part in a televised debate with the other party leaders: she can't think on her feet. When someone is feeding her lines or she's reading off a script, she's fine; as soon as she's required to "do politics" - convincing people via persuasion and rhetoric - she fails badly.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:28PM
But is she a capable person to run the country? ie competent and with the right virtues?